Haiti's Second U.S. Occupation
Ives, Kim
The date was October 15, 1994, 60 years after the end of the first U.S. occupation of Haiti. Exiled President Aristide was finally back in Haiti but surrounded, in every sense, by the putschist...
...military, however, vetoed the move...
...Aristide wanted to fire the entire army high command and manage the formation of the new army and police with his government...
...In response, on April 26, Clinton scuttled his Haiti envoy Lawrence Pezzulo, with his blatant style of arm-twisting, and replaced him on May 8 with the suave head of the United Negro College Fund, former Congressman William Gray III...
...Ironically, Aristide was elected to fight against the very two processes he has now been returned to legitimate: reconciliation with Duvalierism and neoliberal reforms...
...The United States also went after coup participants and supporters, banning their international financial transactions (which were long since completed) and freezing their assets and bank accounts (which were long since emptied...
...Thirteen other Haitian officers instrumental in the coup were transferred to tranquil embassy duties overseas by "interim commander-in-chief' Lt...
...With the United States in complete military control, Aristide has jettisoned his nationalist program for the revitalization of Haiti's state industries, which had begun to show profits after just a few months of non-corrupt administration in 1991...
...The Cafeteria police used to best symbolize the union of Haiti's police and army, wearing blue police shirts and green army helmets...
...Benning, Georgia...
...Thousands of Haitians, taut with anticipation, thronged the streets outside the green iron fence in front of the National Palace...
...As intervention approached, Aristide's ambiguity increased...
...The refugee issue was now pushing the Clinton Administration to resolve the Haiti question once and for all...
...As for foreign buyers of Haitian industries, he said "Haiti is virgin territory and very cheap right now...
...Although the figures keep changing, as of mid-November the army was slated to be reduced to 1,500, while the police-who will handle internal "law and order"-would number about 6,000...
...the capital to buy up the state industries with the money they have stolen," he explained to Hai'ti Progrds after the Haiti Government/Business Partnership Conference in July, 1993 in Miami...
...Of course, Aristide's 1991 program was not anti-capitalist...
...Aristide had to choose the lesser of two evils...
...This portion of Haiti's import-export bourgeoisie Vol XXVIII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1995 C 0 C 0 7UPDATE / HAITI and their fringe of doctors, lawyers began on August 19, 1994...
...But due to the coup, the Lavalas bourgeoisie now felt that a pact with the technocrats and the United States was more in order...
...Exiled President Aristide was finally back in Haiti but surrounded, in every sense, by the putschist Haitian military and the occupying U.S...
...tive...
...That way, the U.S...
...taxpayers' money to pay C6dras $5,000 a month for rental of his three luxurious homes in Haiti...
...The "separation of the police and the armed forces" is the magic formula offered by U.S...
...So there are several [foreign] companies interested in controlling the Haitian economy...
...Just as they justified foreign intervention, ideologues of the Lavalas bourgeoisie are now justifying neoliberalism...
...Crowds captured dozens of Haitian soldiers and paramilitary gunmen around Haiti and brought them to U.S...
...With Black Hawk helicopters thumping overhead, hundreds of heavily armed U.S...
...anti-imperialist platform of Haiti's How to transfer the apparatus of popular organizations to form the repression from the "bad cop" to 1990 Lavalas alliance that brought the "good cop" without creating an Aristide to power...
...Nor does it really matter...
...and 2) to ensure that "a general amnesty will be voted into law bullet-proof by the Haitian Parliament...
...From May through August, 1994, events quickly accelerated toward invasion...
...For "retraining" the Haitian armed forces, the U.S...
...occupying force retrieved only a small percentage of the tens of thousands of firearms in the hands of attaches and has even returned arms to rural section chiefs and their thugs, prompting popular demonstrations which have been in turn repressed...
...In return, Haiti is to receive $770 million in financing, $80 million of which goes immediately to pay the debt accrued to foreign banks over the past three years since the coup...
...In the ceremony, Aristide profusely thanked Clinton, Carter and the Pentagon...
...To soothe Aristide's initial misgivings about Carter's "Port-au-Prince accord," the Pentagon gave him a 21-gun salute in Washington on September 21...
...he spectacle was surreal, especially in this corner of the Caribbean which has remained so resistant to Americanization over the past century...
...Haitian popular organizations and U.S...
...Central to the deal was intervention, which violated a key commandment of the old alliance...
...The American soldiers then handed them over to the remnants of the very Haitian police with whom the gunmen had collaborated in terrorizing the population during the three years of military rule," reported John Kifner in the October 18 New York Times...
...It simply proposed "Justice, Openness, and Participation" in the running of the government and state industries, sweeping out corruption and inefficiency...
...Five days later, Aristide gave sixmonths notice that Haiti was abrogating (belatedly, according to refugee advocates) the interdiction agreement signed between presidents Duvalier and Reagan in 1981, which supposedly permitted the United States to intercept fleeing Haitian refugees on the high seas...
...But the two evils were, in fact, one...
...On March 30, Ha'ti Progras broke a story about Yvon Desanges, a refugee returned to Haiti from the Guantinamo detention center who had been hacked to death by a military death squad...
...Faced with questions or criticism about intervention, the Lavalas bourgeoisie would respond that On the day of his return from exile, Aristide-behind a Aristide had no alterna- shield-is presented to the crowd at the National Palace...
...military sound systems on Humvees and helicopters, and by President Aristide himself in his October 15 Palace address...
...First of all, no country can survive without capitalism...
...This mafioso private sector [in Haiti] has robbed the Haitian people through smuggling, drug-dealing, government subsidies, nonpayment of their taxes, and all that, so that now they have ce street...
...The new coalition is between the Lavalas bourgeoisie and the technocrat bourgeoisie along with U.S...
...His government is only a portrait...
...For good measure, the new forces Vol XXVIII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1995 9 Vol XXVllI, No 4 JAN/FEB 1995 9UPDATE / HAITI will be supervised indefinitely by the yellow-capped International Police Monitors, the most multinational component of the United States' "multinational" occupation...
...The de facto protection by the U.S...
...the real regime is American...
...Most important to the justification process, however, was the UN Security Council...
...government also unfroze $79 million of assets of the coup-makers and their wealthy supporters, and will provide $5 million for stipends and civilian retraining of Haitian soldiers who have been so infamous for repression that they cannot be recycled into the "new" Haitian military...
...Michel Francois from mustard-yellow to white...
...This made for a series of almost humorous about-faces...
...military could take over smoothly and avoid casualties in an intervention that was widely unpopular in the U.S...
...These people are really believing in us now," a U.S...
...days in exile, President Aristide was finally back in Haiti but surrounded, in every sense, by the putschist Haitian military and the occupying U.S...
...In short, the United States needed to justify the invasion...
...The essence of the deal, signed by exPresident Carter and de facto President Jonassaint, was two-fold: 1) to keep Gen...
...One year earlier, Aristide's first projected homecoming had been foiled...
...Congress and among the U.S...
...Former President Jimmy Carter, with former Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen...
...But it was obvious by now that despite his denials, Aristide had placed all his hopes on the United States...
...The "bad cop" death squads of FRAPH were conceived, recruited and funded by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), The Nation revealed in October, and C6dras and most of the Haitian high command had been on the CIA payroll...
...The measures did little to pressure the putschists from power...
...The three designated coup villains-C6dras, Brig...
...At that time, the opening for insurrection...
...Army h )pters arrive in October, 1994...
...Never...
...guns, the legislators passed a law on October 8 which granted amnesty for "political matters...
...Embassy, for instance, early in 1994 reported in a secret memo, that "the Haitian Left, including President Aristide and his supporters in Washington and here, consistently manipulate and fabricate human rights abuses as a propaganda tool" and that "FRAPH has essentially the same modus operandi [of terror] as the Lavalas' 'Comitis de quartiers' [neighborhood committees...
...solidarity groups were aghast, prompting Aristide to backtrack and issue an open letter on June 22 saying "I have never asked for military intervention, nor will I. We have no illusion that a military intervention would serve the purpose of restoring democracy, or justice to Haiti...
...Whether he is a prisoner or player, or something in between, is not totally clear...
...high command of the former repressive forces is becoming clearer daily to ordinary Haitians, and also to the American GIs, who often sympathize with the Haitian people's struggle...
...After a surge of Duvalierist violence and a well-orchestrated U.S./UN retreat, the return date of October 30, 1993 fixed by the July 1993 Governors Island Accord came and went...
...forces...
...Michel NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 8UPDATE / HAITI Franqois-were all spirited out of Haiti, away from justice, to comfortable exiles, thanks to U.S...
...Now we are going to have the Americans controlling us completely and imposing their financial system which, in fact, has never had good results...
...No one seems able to say exactly what will happen to the gunmen, called attaches, who murdered, robbed and raped with impunity...
...Now they and the rest of the police will wear new uniforms with inoffensive yellow and maroon baseball caps...
...It will be like Somalia...
...troops snaked through the crowds with walkie talkies or surveyed the scene with binoculars from towering armored vehicles, windows or rooftops...
...Clinton began to "carry out a series of diplomatic, public, and other steps that would allow him to assert all other NACLLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 6UPDATE / HAITI avenues had been exhausted," according to the September 25 Washington Post...
...These [UN] sanctions are being drafted in a way that sets them up for failure," said Berton Wides, one of Aristide's lawyers, on May 4. "They are so half-hearted that aitians in Port-au-Prince watch U.S...
...The 1993 sanctions targeted oil and weapons, while the new ones cut all trade (except for food and medicine) and non-commercial air traffic with Haiti...
...On April 12, TransAfrica's Randall Robinson, after strategizing with Aristide and the Black Caucus, launched a 27-day media-intensive hunger strike urging Clinton to change his repatriation policy...
...reforms...
...Thus the old "unseparated" armed forces of about 7,000 and the new "separated" ones will barely differ in size, contrary to the message sent by the mainstream media...
...On March 18, Aristide relaunched his refugee offensive, calling Clinton's refugee policy "racist and criminal" at a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus in Miami...
...On July 29, Aristide clearly endorsed intervention in a letter to the UN Security Council urging passage of the resolution authorizing U.S...
...government has openly admitted that it will use U.S...
...high command of the former repressive forces is becoming clearer daily to ordinary Haitians...
...The new program is to bring about neoliberal "structural readjustment" of the Haitian economy...
...Money transfers from Haitians in the United States to their families in Haiti-which account for the vast bulk of the country's foreign revenue-were slashed to $50 per person per month, helping to fuel escalating desperation...
...You have to understand, the world has changed in these three years," said Father Antoine Adrien, former head of Aristide's Presidential Commission, to James Ridgeway of the Village Voice...
...But for Adrien, it is "better to privatize them...
...Clinton made his nationally televised address on September 15 to set the stage...
...In Grand Goave, Cap Haitien, and J&r6mie, large demonstrations took place to demand that those members of the military and attaches responsible for human rights abuses during the dictatorship be brought to justice...
...capital...
...government was itself using human rights abuses "as a propaganda tool," issuing stronglyworded daily statements to decry putschist violence...
...On June 3, he began to call for the United States to carry out a "swift and determined action" in Haiti, and even asked for a "surgical strike," alluding eli- specifically to the 1989 Panama invasion as a model...
...government largesse...
...the good cop to offer comfort, escape, and a solution...
...forces...
...However, Antoine Izm6ry-one of Haiti's largest merchant capitalists and the principal funder of Aristide's 1990 campaign, who became a martyr for democracy when executed by attaches on September 11, 1993 -would have strongly disagreed...
...JeanClaude Duperval, himself implicated in the September 1991 coup, the January 1991 attempted coup, and in drug-trafficking...
...Instead, they just increased the flow of Haitian commerce across the Dominican border, which remained wide open throughout the crisis despite regular announcements of resolve issued from Washington and Santo Domingo...
...The same day, Clinton retreated from automatic repatriation to the Reagan era's policy of interviewing refugees aboard U.S...
...During June and July, the United States, followed by Canada, the Netherlands, the Dominican Republic, and France, stopped its commercial flights to Haiti...
...Inside the fence and across the broad lawn studded with a mix of Haitian and U.S...
...expansion of assembly industries and agribusiness...
...Sam Nunn (D-GA), held two days of talks with C6dras in Portau-Prince which resulted on September 18 in a deal for "a peaceful, cooperative entry of international forces into Haiti, with a mutual respect between American commanders and the Haitian military commanders," as Carter reported in his September 19 press conference...
...occupation force was "inserted," as Secretary of State Warren Christopher characterized it...
...capital and the whatever they want," as one U.S...
...By late May, record numbers of refugees were again fleeing Haiti...
...When asked in a National Public Radio interview on June 25 if he would agree to be restored to power through foreign military intervention, Aristide replied "Never...
...While under-thetable payoffs are also likely, the U.S...
...police monitor/retrainer told Kifner...
...But and engineers had rallied to the now came the trickiest part of all...
...And never again...
...troops...
...Members of the Haitian parliament who had been living in exile were flown in on U.S...
...The U.S...
...Candidates for "professionalization" are to be drawn largely from the "previous" Haitian armed forces, many officers and specialists of which had already been trained in the United States, mostly at the School of the Americas in Ft...
...government, in cahoots with the putschists, was carrying out a classic good cop/bad cop routine: the bad cop to abuse and terrorize...
...population at large...
...It was a choice, they argued, between continuing the reign of terror under C6dras or inviting U.S...
...soldiers, as they had been instructed to do by U.S...
...The countdown for the inevitable intervention of the "good cop" Army Psychological Operations official put it...
...This article will appear in the forthcoming NACLA book Haiti: Dangerous Crossroads, to be pub- lished by South End Press...
...cutters, with the difference that the "screened in" would be taken to "safe havens" in any country in the hemisphere other than the United States...
...The ceremony of the Pentagon showed us very clearly that our president was recognized, that he had been returned his legitimacy," said close Aristide advisor and former Planning Minister Renaud Bernadin, who had severely criticized the Carter deal only days before...
...planes...
...Support for intervention was by now the hallmark of the "Lavalas bourgeoisie...
...troops entered Haiti on September 19, and quickly "interfaced"-in militaryspeak-with their Haitian counterparts...
...C6dras and his armed thugs have conducted a reign of terror, executing children, raping women, killing priests," Clinton said...
...pressure on Aristide, launched a savage new wave of repression and took over the parliament's leadership offices from the elected lawmakers...
...Army tank on a Port-au-Prin diminish the power of Aristide's executive branch in favor of the more conservative Parliament...
...On May 6, 1994, the United States pushed through Security Council Resolution #917, which stiffened the embargo against Haiti on paper, but not really on its borders...
...It would ultimately be to the benefit of the state because we can collect taxes from them and have money to do other work...
...Raoul C6dras in power until October 15, while the U.S...
...human rights groups to give more than $1 million from a new "Human Rights Fund...
...military intervention...
...The Haitian putschists issued ridiculously defiant, transparently phony, nationalist calls for resistance, thereby playing their role in intervention theatrics...
...military intervention...
...they almost seem designed to fail so that the Administration can say 'I told you so...
...police departments...
...After three years and 15 Kim Ives is a journalist at the weekly newspaper Haiti Progres...
...But if these guys just walk free, it's all going to turn sour...
...force was in place, march of the "technocrat" sector the people might take to the streets of the bourgeoisie, which was and "get the idea that they can do more tied to U.S...
...The de facto protection by the U.S...
...If C6dras Lavalas bourgeoisie was looking and other putschists were to flee to stop the political and economic before the U.S...
...Its goal is as cosmetic as the repainting of the infamous Cafeteria police station of Col...
...Philippe Biamby, and Col...
...To further provoke reaction, on May 11 the military installed a second de facto president, Duvalierist chief justice Emile Jonassaint, and cranked up repression a few more notches...
...government wants to employ exclusively its own International Criminal Investigations Training and Assistance Program (ICITAP), which is staffed by current and former agents of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Secret Service, and U.S...
...n July 31, the Security Council passed Resolution #940, which gave the United States authority to carry out a military intervention in Haiti on the UN's behalf, an arrangement now being dubbed "sphere-of-influence" peacekeeping...
...On the "civilian" demilitarization front, despite a much vaunted "buy-back" program, the U.S...
...One strong possibility is that their friends in the Haitian police will simply let them go...
...The new "professionalized" police and army will be-if all goes according to planmore responsive to central (and U.S.-guided) control, not as prone to arbitrary and indiscreet violence, and better versed in focused surveillance and repression of democratic and popular organizations...
...With the watchword of "reconciliation," the United States is remodeling and shoring up the entire Duvalierist apparatus, in both its military and civilian incarnations...
...What was good in 1991 is not necessarily good in 1994...
...Carter also invited C6dras and his wife, whom he found "slim and very attractive," to visit his church in Georgia...
...But Clinton still had a plan to converse more with the thugs to create a "permissive entry"-in Pentagon parlance-for U.S...
...We must act...
...But by June, the U.S...
...Allan Nairn summarized the plan entitled "Strategy of Social and Economic Reconstruction" in the July/August Multinational Monitor: "Haiti commits to eliminate the jobs of half of its civil servants, massively privatize public services, 'drastic[ally]' slash tariffs and import restrictions, eschew price and foreign exchange controls, grant 'emergency' aid to the export sector, enforce an 'open foreign investment policy,' create special corporate business courts 'where the judges are more aware of the implications of their decisions for economic efficiency,' rewrite its corporate laws, 'limit the scope of state activity' and regulation, and ian walks by a U.S...
...The U.S...
...The U.S...
...You have to remember that the coalition that brought [Aristide] to power is not the same coalition that brought him back now," said a prominent Haitian intellectual in the October 23 New York Times...
...Overseen by U.S...
...Today, A worn those industries are to be sold to private capitalists, both Haitian and U.S., who backed the September 1991 coup with their heads, hearts and wallets...
...U.S.AID began searching for Haitian and H' cc U.S...
...Colin Powell and Aristide-critic Sen...
...In the middle of it all sat Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a small figure on a regal chair in a bullet-proof glass cage, exhibited for the crowds like an animal in a zoo...
...By early 1994, the coup leaders, emboldened by U.S...
...soldiers, scores of handshaking dignitaries, ear-touching security personnel, and eye-roaming journalists swarmed around the Palace's wide steps...
...The U.S...
Vol. 28 • January 1995 • No. 4
